I'm having problems communicating with the licensing server, what should I check?

If you've determined that LicenseControl is blocked by a firewall and/or proxy server (see information below) and that you can't or won't setup the network services to allow LicenseControl to communicate with the licensing server, you'll need to use LicenseControl's manual licensing capability (expand/read the Manual Licensing Detail, below).

Manual Licensing Detail

Software built using LicenseControl versions 4.350 and newer, first available on 2010-10-14, will present additional options on the third successive failure to reach the licensing server (i.e., the third failure without quitting LicenseControl) — so you should always retry a few times without quitting LicenseControl. You may need to contact the software Vendor to obtain a newer build if this capability is required because you can't get your proxy/firewall enabled for LicenseControl.

Important: If you have multiple LicenseControl'd applications, you should setup your firewall/proxy — the manual licensing option requires multiple steps and is somewhat involved and is provided only as a workaround for incomplete firewall/proxy setups (see below for comments on ISA server setup).

LicenseControl is designed to give the manual licensing option only for specific kinds of errors. However, if you're getting some unusual error that prevents you from connecting to the licensing server, you can force an error that will cause LicenseControl to present the manual licensing option (see below).

Since LicenseControl's licensing operations consist of a series of HTTP/HTTPS requests and responses, the manual licensing process simply involves allowing the User to send/receive those requests/responses to/from the licensing server via a browser (i.e., instead of LicenseControl doing it directly). The User does this by taking the requests from LicenseControl, sending them via a Web browser, then taking the responses from the Web browser and giving them to LicenseControl. This is exactly the same as having LicenseControl perform the requests directly, it's just that the User "manually proxies" each request/response via a Web browser to complete all the steps within the licensing transaction being performed.

When manual licensing is activated, LicenseControl guides the User through the process and, based upon choices the User makes, will automate each step of the process as much as is possible. The User choices include indicating the kind of Web browser (some have limitations that lengthen the process) and whether the Web browser is located on the current system or a different system. If the Web browser is located on the current system, LicenseControl helps "drive" the browser, thus shortening the process. By being able to use a browser on a different system from the one that's performing the licensing operation, a remotely located (even off-site) Internet-connected system can be used.

Note that LicenseControl must remain running (i.e., on the system being licensed) throughout the entire multi-step manual licensing process.

Also note that some product Vendors customize the LicenseControl user interface and allow a shortened License ID entry. In such cases, you may need to enter the full 65-character License ID when using manual licensing.

You can force LicenseControl to present the manual licensing option:

if you're running LicenseControl version 4.550 or newer, select the "Enable Manual Licensing..." menu to cause the manual licensing option to be presented after 3 failures attempting to communicate with the licensing server
OR (if you're running a version of LicenseControl prior to 4.550)
disconnect your network cable or disable your network connection or add a local firewall rule that prevents LicenseControl from communicating with the licensing server
try the licensing operation (e.g., try to activate a license) — get the failure 3 times without exiting LicenseControl and you should get the manual licensing dialog (for some operating system configurations, you may have to wait multiple minutes for network timeouts)
now undo the action you performed to cause the applicable error (i.e., reconnect or re-enable the network or remove the local firewall rule that was added)
follow LicenseControl's manual-licensing instructions — multiple steps are required to complete a licensing operation

Again, the manual licensing process involves multiple steps for each licensing operation, all of which must be completed without exiting LicenseControl.

LicenseControl uses the industry-standard web-browsing protocols and ports (HTTP/HTTPS on port 80/443) to communicate with the licensing server. As such, if you can use a Web browser to access our web pages at www.derman.com (and, if you're reading this, you can), then you should also be able to connect to our licensing server.

There are two notable exceptions to this:

if the system you're using employs outgoing firewall software that controls network connections based upon the application from which they originate (e.g., "Little Snitch" on OS X or "PCZoneAlarm" on Windows), then you will need to configure your system to allow LicenseControl to communicate
if your network employs a proxy server that proxies based upon individual applications, then you will need to ensure that the proxy server allows LicenseControl to communicate

Thus, if you can use a Web browser to access our web pages at www.derman.com (and, if you're reading this, you can), then you should also be able to connect to our licensing server — if you can't it's most likely that your network controls are preventing LicenseControl from communicating with the licensing server. If that's so, see the information, above, regarding manual licensing.

Note: a LicenseControl query can have multiple parameters that each are multiple kilobytes in length with a total URI maximum of 8,190 bytes. Browsers, proxy servers and network communications must pass the entire parameter collection. Licensing operations will fail if parameters are truncated or altered.

2011-09: We've seen a small percentage of cases where the manual licensing will fail on the final/longer URI (it'll appear to "hang") because the network is not passing the longer URI. We've only seen this with Macs and have seen that using a browser on a PC on the same network will work (i.e., just re-issue the the request that failed). The failure has not been OS-version or browser-kind related so the evidence points to some software issue on those systems and/or networks (e.g., some networking-altering software product, some errant packet inspecting router, some misconfigured and/or over-zealous and/or erroneous security server, etc.). 'Though we have no confirmation, SonicWALL products have been implicated as causing this issue – possibly upstream at the ISP.

2012-01: We've released LicenseControl 4.600 that works around the "longer URLs can get whacked" issue. If you're having problems, you can ask the supplier of the licensed product for a build that uses LicenseControl 4.600 or later.

ISA Server Setup

Some organizations create a rule called "General Product Updates" to allow all traffic, for anonymous users — important that part, as Mac software, and many pieces of Windows software, do not send credentials — to specified URL Sets and Domain Sets.

You may need to create a new URL set for the product being licensed, and for http://www.derman.com/* and http://tss-geotrust-crl.thawte.com/* (or the applicable certificate URL authority)

Provided both these URLs are accessible for anonymous traffic, activation normally works.

More Detail

LicenseControl supports most proxy setups. LicenseControl uses the proxy setup defined for your web-browsing services. If a proxy server is configured, LicenseControl will use it and will prompt you for the username and password if one is required by the proxy server setup. However, there are proxy servers that are configured to use empty login credentials so, if you normally don't see any proxy login but using LicenseControl shows one, try not entering any login credentials and just press the button.

LicenseControl does not support a script/server-driven automatic proxy (.pac file) setup allowed by some configurations. In such configurations, you'll either need to configure the proxy setup manually before LicenseControl will be able to use it or you'll need to use the manual licensing capability.

Specifically, LicenseControl uses the curl library to connect to the licensing server. On an OS X system, you can easily test a curl-based connection via the command line. This may provide valuable troubleshooting information. To do so:

bring up a Terminal window (launch /Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
if your network does not use a proxy server, issue the command:

curl -x www.derman.com:80 http://www.derman.com/ > ~/Desktop/foo.html
if your network does use a proxy server, issue the command:

curl -U user:password -x proxy-server-address:proxy-server-port http://www.derman.com/ > ~/Desktop/foo.html

where user and password are the username and password required by your proxy server (if no proxy login is required, omit the "-U user:password" portion of the command) and proxy-server-address and proxy-server-port provide the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) or the IP address and port number for the proxy server

In either of the cases, above, if successful, the curl command will create a web page named foo.html on your desktop. If you open that web page, you'll see our home page, minus the graphics (i.e., drag the file icon for the foo.html file from your desktop onto a web-browser window).

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I'm having problems communicating with the licensing server, what should I check?